[Vwdiesel] FW: Need diesel Vanagon advice/help (longish)

[Mary Beth and Chris Geiser]

Can anyone here give Ken a little advice (see message below)?  He is not on
this list, so you'd have to pmail him at:
kenwilfy at COMCAST.NET
I think he's figured out the problem, but I've never taken off a throttle
arm, so can't tell him how to rearrange...

Thanks,
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon at GERRY.VANAGON.COM] On Behalf Of
Ken Wilford
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 7:24 PM
To: vanagon at GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: Need diesel Vanagon advice/help (longish)

I have an 83 diesel Vanagon with a 5 speed transmission.  When I got it,
it had a bum engine and we took the engine out of an 82 diesel Rabbit.
The rabbit belonged to a friend of mine and I had driven it many times,
and also I had driven it probably less than 500 miles before I pulled
the engine out and put it in the van.  It always had good power (for a
diesel rabbit).  The car zipped along and didn't struggle on the road.
However in the van it is a much different story.  It does not accelerate
at all.  It struggles to get up to 40 mph and then if you had a really
long flat straight you might be able to get it up to 55 mph and put it
in 5th gear but you are flooring the accelerator the entire time.

Now we have some options:
1. This is normal, and I just have to live with it.
2. This is not normal and even though the van has low power it can do
better than it is doing.

I really don't have any experience with driving a diesel Vanagon so
perhaps some of you out there can chime in who actually own and drive them.

Now for the advice part.  When we put the diesel engine into the
Vanagon, it was running so well, I didn't want to mess anything up.  So
instead of swapping over the diesel Vanagon fuel injection pump, I left
the Rabbit one on the engine.  However this required us to swap the
throttle arm on top of the fuel pump from the Vanagon pump to the Rabbit
pump.  When we were going to do this I though the arm could only go on
one way.  That there was a notch in it or something that would prevent a
dummy like me from taking it off and putting it on wrong.  However there
is not.  The splined shaft is the same all the way around so you can put
the linkage arm on pretty much any way you want.  But the pump itself
cares which way the arm is on and it will not work properly without it
in a specific orientation.  So I am suspecting that our power problem
could be due to the fact that this linkage arm is not installed
properly.  Therefore the throttle is not getting the chance to open up
all of the way and therefore we are not getting the full power that the
engine can deliver.  It would be like trying to drive with a rock under
the pedal.  So my question is, is there a way to know that you have the
throttle arm on, in the proper orientation?  If so how?

If the throttle arm is not the culprit are there any other ways to get a
little more out of this engine to make the van more driveable?

Any and all advice is much appreciated.  Thanks for listening and caring.

Ken Wilford
John 3:16
www.vanagain.com